


From the Mountain's Shadow

by whichstiel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alaska, Cas has his own adventures, Castiel-centric, Fairies, Gen, POV Castiel, Possessed Cars, Quiet longing, Season/Series 12, Sigils, Speculation, Where Cas was banished
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-15
Updated: 2016-06-15
Packaged: 2018-07-15 05:16:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7209305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whichstiel/pseuds/whichstiel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wherein Cas gets stranded in the wilderness. </p><p>Set immediately after Toni Bevell banishes Cas in the season 11 finale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	From the Mountain's Shadow

In the shadow of a great, gray mountain peak on a half thawed tundra plain an angel lies, umoving. The field is quiet. Even the birds have fallen silent after the angel cracked in from out of nowhere and rolled over lichen and stone like a windblown branch. The angel wears a tan trenchcoat which is currently splayed across the ground like wings. The trenchcoat stirs, then groans. Slowly the angel raises himself onto hands and knees.

Castiel spits dirt and lichen out of his mouth. His body sings with pain and he thinks for a brief, weak moment about praying to God. Except that God turned out to be Chuck. Self-indulgent, faux-prophet Chuck. And anyway, God - Chuck - is dead. He groans again and pushes himself back onto his heels, steadying himself against a rush of dizziness. Above the horizon there is most definitely a viable sun in the sky. “At least that’s still here,” he says. Castiel digs into his inner coat pocket and pulls out his cell phone, thumbing it on. No service. But the time on his phone kept ticking away while he was unconscious. It’s been nearly seven hours since he and Sam walked down the bunker stairs and into an ambush. _Sam_. 

He promised Dean he’d keep Sam safe. It was Dean’s dying wish. Something in his chest writhes and he stows it away fiercely. Even though he knows it’s useless Castiel extends his wings and tries to fly back to Sam. It hurts on a molecular level. It also doesn’t work. Taking a deep breath, he picks a direction - down seems like a sensible choice - and begins to run. He’ll run for days if he has to without stopping. He has to get back to Sam. 

Banishment weakened him and Castiel stops several times to slurp water from streams or murky puddles, replenishing his body until his grace can patch the damage. It’s overcast and he’s reminded starkly of Purgatory as he runs down the mountain and descends into conifer forest. In Purgatory, Dean’s prayers kept him company for months even when he traveled alone. He imagines that he feels Dean’s thoughts as he runs, and it gives him strength. 

He shivers over a stream and looks up to see a massive brown bear peering out from the forest. Its hackles are up. Broken wings or not, it pays to be an angel. Castiel regards it calmly for a long moment, blade pressed against his forearm inside his sleeve, before it snuffles and plods away into the evergreen thicket leaving him to run on in peace. 

After several hours of running he finally encounters a road. He looks left and right but the difference is indiscernible. Castiel turns left and resumes his run. 

When the forest bleeds into fenced rangelands his phone finally gets a weak signal. He immediately dials Sam. Sam’s phone rings but he never picks up and his voicemail answers instead, garbled by static. 

Castiel’s steady voice belies the swooping feeling in his chest. “Sam. I hope you’re okay. I’m not sure where I am but I’m on my way back. I’ll be there as soon as I can.” He hangs up and to be thorough, sends him the same in a text. It hangs for seemingly forever but goes through in the end. He hesitates for a moment. Sam has been utterly alone for hours now with an unknown assailant. But Sam is a Winchester. He likely prevailed in the fight. It’s the Winchester tendency towards suicidal self-sacrifice that Castiel worries about. Castiel frowns and types, “Hang in there.” Yes, that looks good. Supportive. Castiel sends it, puts his phone back in his pocket, and continues to jog down the road. 

After a long stretch of empty fence line, the road is intersected by a smaller gravel drive. Deep tire tracks scar the ground on both sides of the smaller road. They look relatively fresh. A small wooden signpost with chipped white numbers painted onto it marks the intersection. Somebody has placed a carved bear next to the sign, though the bear has fallen onto its side, paws up, carved fur worn almost smooth and splattered in mud. It’s as sure a sign of civilization as anything he’s seen, so Castiel takes a chance and turns down the offshoot. The sun sets behind the trees.

Mercifully, there’s a house at the end of the drive. On either side, thick conifers turn the clearing in which the house squats into a deep, dim cave. There are no lights on in the house, which isn’t very promising. Castiel knocks twice, politely, then breaks down the door.

“Hello?” Castiel enters cautiously but nobody answers and he relaxes a little. The house smells musty like an unopened storage box. In the entryway mail is spilled across the floor. He bends to pick up an envelope and checks the address. “Alaska,” he says and sighs. The quickest way will likely be by air then. He’ll have to find an airport. Wait for a plane. Wait on the flight. The hours add up too quickly. 

Castiel finds a phone attached to the wall in the kitchen but when he picks up the receiver there is no dial tone. “Damn it,” he mutters. Looks like it’s back to jogging down an abandoned road again. From the kitchen window, he spots a truck parked behind the house. Castiel lets himself out through the back door, letting it bang open behind him. The truck is ghostly silver and shines in the weak twilight. He runs a hand over the bed and checks the tires. It looks like a good, solid vehicle. Hope flops in his chest. 

Whenever Sam or Dean told stories about stealing vehicles, they made it sound easy. He tries the truck door and it falls open encouragingly. When he checks inside there are no keys. Castiel frowns and trails his fingers along the display panel then checks the cupholders and visors. He considers for a moment trying to use his grace to power the truck, but he still feels unsteady from the banishment. The last thing he needs this close to securing transportation is to fry the only vehicle he’s seen in miles with his wobbly powers. Dean or Sam would know how to hotwire it. As soon as he gets back to the bunker he’ll ask them. Teaching an angel of the Lord how to steal a car will make Dean laugh. Memory, then grief grips him in a black wave. Not Dean. Sam will show him.

Castiel runs back inside the house. If there is a vehicle parked outside, surely the keys are close? He rummages through the kitchen opening drawers along the way and retraces his steps through the house until he finds a set dangling from a wooden rack near the front entrance. When he gets back outside he pauses and tilts his head for a moment, considering the truck. Hadn’t he closed the driver’s side door? Castiel sighs. Maybe not. He still feels a little detached like part of him still sits in the bunker kitchen in his mind.

He leans in the door and inserts the key. The truck starts instantly with a roar and he slaps the wheel in celebration. As the electronics switch on radio static fills the air at full volume. Castiel claps one hand to his ear and switches off the radio. He checks the gas gauge. It’s close to empty and his heart sinks. Turning off the truck he looks around desperately. Where in the world is he going to find fuel? He ran through half the house already and didn’t recall seeing anything promising. There is a small shed in the far corner of the clearing. Castiel stalks to the shed. It’s locked with a rusting padlock. He grabs the metal and twists it viciously. The entire lock tears out of the wood. Inside there are gardening tools. Rakes, shovels, a lawnmower. Behind the lawnmower he spots a plastic gas can. It’s nearly full. 

With the additional fuel in the truck, the gas needle has only moved up a small increment. Hopefully it will be enough to get him to a town where he can try again to reach Sam. At the very least maybe it will be enough to get him to another vehicle. Castiel starts the truck, flips on the lights, and heads out on the road. 

As he drives Castiel pulls out his phone again. When his phone registers a signal he dials Sam. Sam’s phone rings twice and then a voice answers, “Cas?”

“Sam! Are you alright?” 

“Cas, you’re --- up. Are -----right?” says Sam. 

The connection is horrible so Castiel talks fast. “Sam. I’m in Alaska. I’m on my way back but I’ve got to find a town, find a plane or something.”

Sam says something in reply but it’s so garbled that Castiel can’t make out a single word. 

“Sam, I’m coming back, alright?” The phone beeps. He lost the connection. “Don’t do anything foolish,” he tells the phone and keeps driving.

It’s a clear night and the waxing moon is nearly full and high in the sky, flooding the landscape with soft blue light. On the horizon he spots the artificial orange glow of a town. The road appears to curve in the right direction. He’ll find fuel and information there and maybe a reliable telephone. Castiel turns over the failed conversation with Sam in his mind. He couldn’t understand much, but Sam didn’t sound panicked or hurt. The woman who had activated the sigil - what had become of her? His fingers tighten on the wheel like fists. 

The road dips and bends like the swell of waves. In the distance the orange glow grows. 

 

The fuel light on the dash flicks on with a click. Castiel looks at the light and at the glow on the horizon and rolls his eyes. “Of course,” he mutters. Dean taught him that there are always miles left on an “empty” tank, but he eyes the distance to the town and readies himself for more foot travel followed by, in all likelihood, another car theft in the very near future. 

From between the trees approaching headlights flash. It’s a comforting sight. Castiel guides the truck along the wooded road and as the other vehicle approaches, he flips his headlights low. The lights in the truck flip to high again. Castiel purses his lips and flicks the lights to low. Again, the high beams turn on. The other vehicle has started flashing their headlights, likely in irritation. He grimaces. Switches the lights to low again. And then the wheel jerks from under his hands and the truck glides smoothly into the grill of the oncoming car. 

Castiel wakes to gravel pressing into his right side. His skin burns as he stirs. His arm feels wet inside his coat. The world swims in a kaleidoscope jumble of trees and stars, and then his eyes focus on the road. Not too far from him the truck idles. Its hood is crumpled and the front bumper dangles off. One of its lights is out. The other shines a spotlight on the twisted ruin of a sedan. The other vehicle has rolled, the roof smashed into the body of the car. The truck’s engine revs and Castiel angles his head for a good look through the spiderwebbed windows and into the cab. It’s empty as far as he can see. The engine revs again, headlight focused on the crumpled car. He can hear quiet keening from within and his breath catches. There’s somebody alive in the wreckage. 

Something about this scenario catches in his mind. He remembers a story from an early Winchester gospel. There was a haunted truck, a vengeful spirit. Castiel considers this. If the truck is being piloted by a veil-deranged soul he should be able to quiet it for a while - at least enough time to heal the victim in the car and send them out of harm’s way. A ghost is no match for an angel. He looks down at his hand, skinned and oozing blood and flexes his fingers over the gravel, preparing to push himself upright. Of course, he should have been able to detect the spirit as soon as he’d climbed into that truck. _Inadequate_. It’s his new motto. 

The truck revs again and Castiel is up, sprinting towards the truck. He grabs the handle but it won’t open. The door is locked but the window is half shattered, safety glass belling out from the frame. Castiel punches through the glass just as the truck’s tires squeal. It peels away in reverse. The sudden movement backwards surprises Castiel but he manages to lock his fingers onto the window frame. Shards of glass dig into his palms as he struggles to pull himself into the cab. The truck weaves in controlled curves, then wobbles like a panicked bull. Tires churning up a cloud of dust, the truck speeds off towards the overturned car. It’s going to try to knock me off, Castiel realizes. His body dangles directly in the path of the wreck. He grunts and throws one leg onto the hood, maneuvering his arms around the window frame until he’s hanging from the hood, body sliding across it with every swerve. The truck stops abruptly, slamming him into the windshield. Blood trickles down his forehead and into his eye. He stretches his hand towards the cab and his eyes glow blue. The truck’s headlights die and the engine quiets. 

Warily Castiel waits, white knuckling the hood. When nothing happens he slides off and rushes back to the wreckage. Whatever haunts the truck, he’s just triggered a snooze session that should buy him some time. The wrecked car is too quiet but Castiel can still detect a life flickering in there. He gets a solid grip on the driver’s side door and rips it off. Inside a woman dangles from her seatbelt unconscious. Castiel carefully extracts her and lays her on the road. She’s injured badly but he can heal her. His hands glow over her in the night under the bright moon.

When he’s finished his work she rouses, gasps, and looks around fearfully. Castiel shushes her, calms her. “You’ve been in a car accident,” he says. “But you’re going to be fine. Can you get up?” She nods her head and grabs his arm. He can feel her trembling. “Good. Listen. You’re not safe here.” He looks at the truck and she turns her head to follow his gaze. “The truck is…” Haunted? No. “Malfunctioning. I can fix it but it’s better if you stay away. Get down the road a little ways.”

She looks down the dark road and back at him, brows knitted. “That your truck? What do you mean malfunctioning.” Her eyes open wide and mouth drops into a horrified O. “You hit me.” It’s part question, part accusation. She starts to back away. 

“I was driving but I assure you I did not hit you.” Castiel lifts his hands and attempts a comforting smile but it must have come out wrong. She continues to back away from Castiel, her back to the truck. 

“Please, come back here. Get off the road.”

In the darkness, the truck’s engine rolls over, catches. It burbles angrily. The woman freezes and slowly turns her look of disbelief towards the truck. Its headlight switches on, trained on the two people in the road. 

There’s no time to think. The truck’s tires spin in the gravel and Castiel sprints towards the woman. He shoves her unceremoniously aside and she rolls into the ditch where the night swallows her up. The truck’s grill slams into Castiel, hurling him back on the road. He skids along the gravel, winded, and the truck brakes suddenly, tires spinning to a stop with Castiel between them. He looks at the mass of metal growling above him and flinches as something very wet and warm envelopes his face. He screams into it and the underbed of the truck glows blue. 

His entire body, the entire world, is on fire. _This is no ghost_ , the rational part of him thinks. The rest of him gibbers incoherently. The truck greedily dips into his grace. His angel blade is in his coat. It’s so close but Castiel can’t seem to even twitch a finger. His body bucks in a seizure.

And then the engine cuts off abruptly. His grace suffuses his body as his wrist flicks and the blade slides into his palm. Something catches hold of his coat and starts to drag him out. His hands still shake, but Castiel scrambles out from beneath the truck. He staggers to his feet, clapping a hand on the woman standing wide-eyed next to him, one hand wound in his lapel and the other wielding a tire iron. They both stare at the iron rod and the glowing goo that drips from it. She drops it and Castiel picks it up, swipes a finger along it. He sniffs it, licks it. Understanding dawns on his face. He keeps his voice low and urgent. “Back up slowly. Stay out of the way.” She nods and takes one shaking step back. 

The engine bellows to life and she shrieks and stumbles backwards. Castiel holds the iron in one hand while in the other, he flips his angel blade in his palm. The headlight flicks on and Castiel charges. The truck’s tires squeal. It’s trying to back away but Castiel leaps onto the hood, digging his blade through the metal as an anchor. He hooks the end of the tire iron on the top of the hood and splays out his legs for stability. The truck weaves as Castiel pulls out the blade and begins carving a sigil into the hot metal of the hood. He spits on his still-bloody hand and presses it into the middle of the sigil then lets go, letting the momentum of the panicked truck throw him into the ditch. The truck stops and the engine emanates a strange wobbling noise, like it’s been sealed in a jar and shaken. The sigil begins to glow until it illuminates the trees on the side of the road. Castiel shields his eyes as the truck implodes. 

 

In Castiel’s experience there are two types of humans. The first babbles incessantly following trauma while the second stays blissfully silent. Thankfully, the woman seems to belong in the second camp. After introducing herself as Farrah (and barely reacting to his own name) she walks beside him for over an hour before she asks, “What the hell was that...that... _everything_ back there.” 

“A comunode. A fairy.” He held up his hand and mimed wriggling. “Crawls into things and possesses them like a snail coiling in a shell. Usually they’re stationary.” He thinks about the house and the clearing, perfectly round like a fairy circle. Remembers its silence and kicks himself. If he had only taken the time, he would have probably found the homeowner’s bodies. After it had killed them, the creature had likely slunk into the truck in hopes of being moved to richer pastures. Like himself, it was likely disappointed to emerge in the wilder parts of Alaska. 

He could sense her trying to fit this into her worldview. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” He is silent for a while. ”You saved my life when you struck it with iron,” Castiel tells her. “Fairies derive their power from their own dimension. But they’ll feed on us if they slip through.” 

“They feed on humans?”

“Yes.” _Angels too_. Castiel suppresses a shudder. That had been a close call. 

In town, Castiel borrows Farrah’s land line to call Sam. His shattered cell phone lies useless on the counter.

“Cas!” Sam sounds relieved.

“Sam. How are you?”

“I’m okay, Cas. Got things under control. She’s a-- Well. I’ll fill you in when you get here.” Maybe it’s the connection. Sam sounds giddy. ”You’re in Alaska?”

Castiel clenches his battered fingers. “Yes.” 

“Okay. Let me know if you need any help getting back.” 

Cas nods solemnly then remembers he’s on the phone. “I will. I’ll need to acquire a new phone. I’ll call you with an update. Are you sure you’re alright? You sound strange.”

Sam chuckles over the phone line. “I’m happy. Cas. Dean’s alive. He’s alive! And he’s got my mom. They’re on their way here.”

Castiel staggers into the counter. “Sam. Dean’s alive?”

“Yeah! Another long story. But he’s okay.” 

Castiel keeps his voice steady but allows himself to cradle his head in his shaking hand. “Thank you, Sam.”

“Yeah, man. Talk to you soon.” 

“Yes.” Castiel presses the end call button and sets the receiver carefully on the counter. He looks heavenward for a moment. It isn’t a prayer, not exactly. His gratitude isn’t targeted. He lets it fill the air around him before swiping at his face with the palms of his hands. He picks up his broken phone, slips it into his pocket, and begins to make his way home.


End file.
